Monthly Archives: June 2015

Did I say things were happening? Well, that was the understatement of the century!!! Just as soon as those permits got issued, the crew showed up this past Monday morning at 8am to start demolition. I think the following photos are what most of you HGTV fans( and those generally inclined to enjoy stuff being wrecked) have been waitng for. Enough of the trials and tribulations of our finances, loans, changes in plans and communication with the builder (cry me a river), let’s smash some stuff up!

I am really glad that a few of you got to see the house before, because it is mostly gone now. Here are before photos:

Now after photos:

I was really hoping to be at the site when they took the first crack at the house, but the timing just didn’t work out. Or better said, they move so fast, if you blink, you’ll miss it… We blinked. They were long done by the time Bill and I arrived at around 5:00pm. We had spent the afternoon with the designer picking out finishes and we were so busy in the morning, we didn’t get a chance to swing by. Bummer. We are hoping for some “in process” photos from the builder.

I also really want to operate the crane thingy that smashes stuff, but I think that’s probably out of the question. Don’t wanna be this guy:

It is amazing how much they did in just one day! Hope you can gather from the photos that the main level is gone. The lower level is the foundation and we are working within that footprint with some reconfiguration. Some may call it a basement, but we call it the lower level. Our guest room is down there, and I refuse to have any guest stay in the “basement”, so the rule is that it is called the lower level or garden level. Still nice views from down there! Saved ourselves a lot by being able to work within that footprint. I was glad to see the chimney still standing as we decided to keep that at the last minute. Ya never know if the message gets communicated to the guys actually doing the work, but so far so good.

Some of the piles of concrete are the walkway and stairs in the back that Job Supervisor Adam said came out way to easily. There is a lot more walkway that needs to come out (all that leads to the back yard), and he said that will not be as easy. Makes me glad we are keeping the front stairs. It was going to cost an additional 5-10K just to remove those so we opted to keep them (against Bill’s better judgement), and Designer Darren assures us he can make them look nice and match the house. You can see the “stairs that go nowhere” here:

Next they will remove all the siding and finish taking out the windows that are being replaced on the lower level. After that, they will start demo inside on the lower level which is being reconfigured. Removal of inside stairs since they are going to be in a different location, opening it up down there and ceiling removal. Then start digging a hole in the back for the foundation to be poured for the addition. We’re cooking’ now! It’s incredible that we are doing this and I can’t describe the excitement to see things getting started. And it’s happening so fast, I feel like I can’t keep up!

Now a change of gears…

So as I said, we spend a good deal of time with Designer Tom this week. This is our second visit with him. Great guy, really easy to work with. He’s the one that does all the tile, flooring and a few other finishes. The first visit we had a couple weeks ago we picked out some thngs but after that exhausting session he wanted us to go look at some houses and get more ideas and really think about what we liked. We must have been all over the place on the first visit. I think perhaps he wasn’t convinced we knew what we wanted. He was right, we really didn’t. Looking at houses helped a lot, and seeing some of the finishes on a large scale was good for us. We looked at as many as we could, and also reasearched more online. We scheduled a follow up meeting for this past Monday to refine our choices.

We met at a construction site so we could take a look at more examples of styles in new homes. Again, very helpful. Then we went back to the showroom and started to make some decisions. Still pretty daunting task… Lots of rooms to cover and not knowing how things are going to look or feel is really challenging. But we stuck with things that we loved and did our best to tie it all together. I think we have made some good choices and expressed ourselves nicely without getting too crazy. Designer Tom kept us on track and made sure we stayed in budget and allowed our personality to come through while keeping with good design. Bill and I work really well together (no surprise there), and liked pretty much all the same things. It was really fun and especially so when you agree! There are things one of us doesn’t have a strong feeling about, so we defer to the other to make the decision. Worked well and we had a lot of fun. I hope I remember this when we run into issues which invariably we will.

So here are some of our selecitons. Hard to get a good feel, but I’ll post them anyway…

Island quartz countertop (piece on the left) – We originally just wanted to do the white marble look for the island, but the builder and Designer Darren implied that maybe we should consider going with more of a “statement” piece for the island. At first we didn’t think we needed to make any “statements” (just not our style). But then we saw this very intereting quartz with a color scheme and design that really appealed to us, and suddenly we became “statement” people. This process does crazy things to you… Photos do not do it justice, it has blue and gray green tones which are tying back to other elements in the house.

Main level fireplace surround. LOVE! Basically the cornerstone of all the other finishes throughout. We both were wowed by this when we saw it in person.

In the laundry room I am going with laminate on the countertop and floor as I don’t really need granite or quartz in there, but am doing a “bubble” backsplash just ’cause I can. I say “I” because Bill did not have much choice. Get it?, bubbles, laundry…

Moving really fast now, so stay tuned. I think that’s all for today, let us know what you think, we would welcome the feedback!

Won’t be months in between posts anymore (a shout out to all you nay sayers – Bob Anderson), ’cause things are happening now! We officially have permits now, got that word on Friday, but nonetheless, work that does not require a permit (mostly demo) has been well underway, and the builder will be converging on the site first thing monday morning to kick start the main event. We had one last requirement before permits were issued Friday that involved the two apple trees (or as the designer says “those two stupid apple trees”) in the backyard. We had to show that we are keeping them and that they are protected with fencing. Then the city had to send someone out to inspect the fencing to make sure it was enough. They were not happy about the fencing at first, now I guess what you see below is better. OMG. This kind of stuff cracks me up. Our city at work…

So once we had the apple trees protected, we said “can we have our permits?” Yes, if you sign this paper and that paper that state you are keeping this and that on the property. If you go to city hall and have these papers notarized, pay some more fees, salute to the west, and stand on your head we will issue your permits. Goodness what a process. Thankfully we are paying someone to do this. If we were on our own, we would be far from here. End of the day, we have permits, and now the real fun begins.

Hopefully now that we have our loan and we have our permits, all the “random” bills we have been getting will slow down. It seems like every time we turn around someone is handing us a bill for some soil test, asbestos abatement, engineering survey, a survey of the survey, lead paint evaluation or some permit or another. We have done like so many before us and just nodded and paid because trying to really understand it all is futile. At some point we should sit down and figure out how much $ we have paid so far even before getting our construction loan. It could be staggering and really depressing. But anyway, on to demo photos!

Check out the newly asbestos free lower level complete with graffiti and a workstation. Love it! All our plans are layed out on the table and I’m so glad they are remembering their safety with the fire extinguisher and caution tape. They better be careful or the caution tape will disappear, I can find many uses for that.

And all the old doors stacked up in the upper level. I think the builder donates these somewhere or something…

And you know things are moving along when you have a big pile of crap in your master bedroom:

Bathroom that will be totally demolished. Part of this space will be our kitchen one day.

And meet Adam (’cause we just did this day), who is our project leader and the main man for our project. Today he was cutting around the windows which will be removed as part of the demo work. He cuts around the window through the framing to remove it so they don’t have to deal with the glass. Interesting.

And I still do love my honey bucket…

In case you are interested and have good eyes, here are the most updated plans.

We are meeting with the interior designer again tomorrow, and we probably need to start making some firmer decisions on some finishes pretty soon. Things are going to start moving quickly now, and hopefully we can keep up and I can document everything on this blog as it happens. Tomorrow should be an interesting day as demo really gets underway, I hope I don’t miss anything! Can’t miss the day the roof comes off.

If I was a true “blogger”, I would have posted an update some time ago because I know many of you are following and wondering what the latest scoop is. I have not updated because it just seems like there is not much to tell. These past couple months have been mostly about waiting. Waiting for permits, waiting for our construction loan to move along, waiting for the appraisal, waiting for, waiting for, waiting for. It just all seems so boring and not “blog-worthy”.So I wait for my moments, wait for things to get to an interesting spot and then BAM, I’m updating the blog. Truly exciting for all of you, I’m sure…So as I mentioned, it’s been a lot of waiting. But the good news is that now much of the waiting is over. Last week our construction loan was approved. We found a great local bank and a really talented loan specialist, and it has been such a different experience than our loan process with US Bank when we purchased this new property. This lady is really communicative, concise, organized and focused so the process has been pretty seamless. I think it has been more difficult for the builder than us because the loan is directly tied into his budget for the remodel, so he has had to break down every cost line by line and have it match with what we could qualify for. He also had to provide a ton of information similar to a resume to get the bank to know that he was a qualified builder. He’s used to having to do that, so it was fine, but probably more work on his side than ours. We’ve gone through so many loans in the past couple years, we have it down to a science, so it felt pretty painless to us. Overall, good process. We also have a sense of satisfaction because this new “construction” loan combines the mortgage on the new house and the construction loan piece so the original US Bank loan (that was so painful to get) will be paid off and we will move forward with one larger consolidated loan with this new bank. Confusing for sure, but the takeaway is that consolidation is good and the less we have with US Bank the better. We’re officially closing on the loan this week.

Lots of talk about budget… We’ve known all along what our budget would be. We are at the limit of what we can borrow, so we knew there was a limit to the amount of construction loan we could get. It is no surprise that the builder did not seem to register that information. His budget kept going up and up and up, and we kept trying to bring it down, down, down, knowing that we would not even qualify for as much as he wanted/needed to spend. In the end when the bank came back and said “here is what you qualify for”, it was no surprise to us, but the builder was surprised at how low the number was and had to make adjustments, He was way over what we could realistically borrow. I think this is pretty typical of builders, so we just had to dial a few things back and we are moving in the right direction. I still think the builder thinks we have an off shore account with hundreds of thousands of dollars in it, but he’s gonna find out the hard way. He has no idea that we have been maxing out credit cards and scraping together money just to pay his fees, the designers fees and all the other “soft costs” that are associated with the process. But we know where we stand and will just dig in and keep things on track.

Next order of business is permits. We should have permits this week. We knew permits would take a long time. We had some special issues with the sidewalk we have to install and the sewers associated with that. Yes, these things are all our responsibility. That part got really complicated so we had to wait a bit longer for permits, but the approval is near. This sidewalk thing is frustrating. It is really for the city, but we have to pay. Just a way for the city to manage its own costs. We plan to engrave our initials in the cement they pour on that (damn) sidewalk. “Bill and Karen forever” will be permanently part of city property that we paid for. I’m not joking… With the loan approval and the permits in sight, we gave the builder the OK to at least get started on some “soft” demolition on the house. Major milestone right there.

So now this has all become really real. Very recently, very real. It’s been so long since we met with Darren who designed the house, we decided to revisit the plans and figure out what it is we are building. I know, you’re saying, “seriously”??? Yes, we designed the floor plan of the house which was submitted to the city for permits, but after that, it’s been out of sight, out of mind, just waiting. Busy lives, work to deal with, big MagnaMemos orders, lots to do, stuff to deal with, and we have not focused on this endeavor. Now suddenly we have a loan approval, permits are almost upon us, the builders crew is ready to move, and we had an “OH SH**!” moment. Seriously, what is it that we are building, and before the construction starts (and when this builder gets started, he moves FAST), are we happy with it??? Called a panic meeting with the designer and builder, discussed many things, adjusted designs on a few rooms, and revisited many past discussions. Much resolved… WHEW! Good, back in tune with what we have going and we are VERY happy with what we are building. This might be a more fluid process than we originally thought. Sounds like we have room to make changes as we go along and we are getting a feel for how this is all going to work. That was a big relief. Amazing what can happen when you get engaged in the process.

So, we have an interior designer. We have met with said designer. We have discussed floors, tiles, and many other finishes. Spent 2 hours with him and we were exhausted. I have a feeling we are going to be exhausted a lot in the future. Our homework was to go and look at houses. Go tour open houses on new construction and start to get a feel for what we like and how we want things to look. This is our new pastime. Every opportunity we have, we are nosing around trying to see what we like. Now we’re starting to have some fun! Lots to be decided and lots of homework to do, but somehow we will fit it in. We are really finding our style and it is going to be a 360 from what we have now. Can’t wait for you all to see it. So I’m attaching a few photos of the house and some of our picks from our first “design day” and you can let us know what you think.

Took some last photos of the existing house before they demolish it…

Builder is using our backyard as a dumping ground…

Back of the house…

Decided we are keeping this wood burning fireplace on the lower level. Last minute change. We will redo the stone…

Shot from the house looking back. This is where the lot will be divided. A new house will be back there eventually. I hope they start building before we have to cut that grass!

You know something is happening when you have a honey bucket in front of you house!!! Let the construction begin!

A few finishes we like. Leaning toward a gray theme with dark floors and white cabinets in the kitchen. Just getting started…